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Oxytocin:
World’s expert talks about this calming hormone

An Interview with Kerstin Uväs-Moberg, M.D.,
Ph. D

If you suffer from stress, high blood
pressure, elevated cortisol in the blood, or other stress-related symptoms,
you will be interested in oxytocin—a hormone which Dr.
Kerstin Uväs-Moberg calls the calm and connection hormone.

How can you bring greater calm and
connection into your life and the life of your children?

Kerstin Uväs-Moberg, M.D., Ph. D, author of The
Oxytocin Factor, is a recognized world authority on oxytocin. Her
research took place at the famed Karolinska Institute in Stockholm
and at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala,
where she is Professor of Physiology. Influential in obstetrics,
psychology, pediatrics, child development, physical therapy and other
fields, Dr. Uväs-Moberg has authored over four hundred scientific
papers and lectures widely in Europe and the USA.

1. In your book, you state, “There are many scientific
conferences on the topics of stress and pain, but very few conferences
deal with calm, rest, and wellbeing.” What does oxytocin
have to do with calm, rest, and wellbeing?

Dr. Uväs-Moberg: Oxytocin, which
was first noticed during birth labor and in nursing
mothers in 1906, acts as both a hormone and a neuropeptide. It
triggers a complex series of reactions that enhance your body’s
relaxation and calmness. This is important in two ways. The first
(1) is the immediate health benefit of lowering stress-related symptoms
and the second (2) is that repeated dosages of oxytocin seem to convert
the immediate benefit into a long-lasting effect. In our studies,
animals who received as little as one dose per day for 5 days needed
little additional oxytocin to stay calm for up to 3 weeks. This
suggests that oxytocin can offer stressed human beings a way to open
up new pathways, to help them relax and restore calm immediately and
across long term situations. I stress oxytocin’s ability
to grow or develop people’s relaxation and restoration capacity.

2. What is the relationship between oxytocin and adrenaline
or other fight/flight responses?

Dr. Uväs-Moberg: The body is intelligent. Oxytocin
does have the reverse effects to flight or fight hormones, but the body
doesn’t call on oxytocin in every situation. Sometimes we
are threatened or in danger and we must respond to our flight or fight
hormones to protect ourselves. However, oxytocin may even be able
to serve us in potentially threatening situations. For example,
if we can stay calm in a tense situation, we may know enough to move
away from danger. We can learn to avoid a fight and respond differently.

3. What does oxytocin actually do?

Dr. Uväs-Moberg: Oxytocin does two
important things: (1) lowers blood pressure and other stress-related
responses, and (2) increases positive social behaviors, such as friendliness
and desire to connect. Oxytocin impacts the body in two ways. The
first is that it is a hormone released from the blood stream as it circulates
in the body. And, it is also released by the nerve centers inside
the brain. This means that it capable of having a direct impact because
it is not only a blood born hormone.

Today, in my opinion, our relaxation responses are under-developed
and we are much more stressed than we have been historically. Therefore,
everything that we can do to enhance our levels of oxytocin increases
our options for wellbeing. The results of an interesting longitudinal
study between mothers and children demonstrate that real contact
(eye contact and direct conversation) between mothers and children has
been reduced by half. Mothers and their children are spending time in
the same room, but only about half that time is spent in real contact. Our
stress may be passed on to the children in this way.

4. Are there ways that people can increase their oxytocin
levels in daily life?

Dr. Uväs-Moberg: Although some are
thinking about developing oxytocin drugs, I believe the absolute best
thing to do is to activate your own oxytocin. Your body knows how
to handle that oxytocin. There are several things that anyone can
do:

Touch is very important. Interactive touch with
human beings is best, but it doesn’t have to be limited to
human beings. Touch happens between people and their pets.

Getting massage is helpful.

Walking, swimming in warm water, and all physical exercise
is excellent.

Deep interaction, intimacy, and eye-contact are also
important.

Sex releases oxytocin.

Safety is important. For example, nursing mothers
exhibit behavior associated with oxytocin when they are in a calming,
familiar room. If you move them to an unknown and more stressful
environment, their safety levels fall and so do their oxytocin behaviors. Therefore,
in the latter case, their capacity to bond with their babies is reduced.
In another example, studies have shown that small groups, 6 – 10
people, seem to have a positive impact on cardiovascular and cancer patience. This
may be because oxytocin is released in the safety of these settings. Perhaps
we need to make sure our family settings include levels of intimacy rather
than just spending time in the same house. Maybe our economic success,
which affords us the ability to sleep in separate rooms and/or beds,
has actually deprived us of the touch necessary for future success in
calmness, connection, and intimacy. When people had less money,
children had to sleep together in the same beds or listen to night time
stories rather than play individual computer games. Societies at
that time had built in bonding and companionship mechanisms. We
need ways to restore these to our children.

5. Oxytocin is often thought of as a female hormone. Do
men have oxytocin and, if so, how does it operate in their lives?

Dr. Uväs-Moberg: Both men and women
have oxytocin and in almost the same amount. Pregnancy, labor,
and nursing activate oxytocin in women and, obviously men do not have
the same activation. But men appear to experience oxytocin when
they relate to their children and they also experience oxytocin with
touch. It is both a mistake to say that oxytocin is only a female
hormone and not a mistake because we do not know all the ways that oxytocin
is activated in men.

6. Your research has supported the ‘Peaceful Touch’ programs
in Swedish public schools. What is ‘Peaceful Touch’ and what
results have been reported by the school systems?

Dr. Uväs-Moberg: ‘Peaceful
Touch’ is a program that works in a variety of ways. One
of the most important is that children are taught how to touch
each other in peaceful ways. Discipline problems have become
very common in Swedish schools. Teachers report that Peaceful
Touch programs have (a) reduced the level of aggression in the classroom,
(b) increased the length of time students can sit still, (c) enhanced
students’ ability to listen, and (d) improved their ability to
take information in. It is important to realize that massage
and/or peaceful touch is beneficial to both the giver and the receiver. This
activity is much better than giving children drugs to control their
behavior. There should be more money for good research of these
programs in Swedish schools. Oxytocin research also suggests
that parents and children learning to give each other ‘Peaceful
Touch’ could be very beneficial. I recognize that ‘touch’ is
a very controversial issue now, but believe that we may be able to
find ways, even if it isn’t physical touch, to give our children
experiences with calm and connection.

7. Are there any medical conditions that you think might
be helped by oxytocin?

Dr. Uväs-Moberg: Children like autistic
children, or others who have problems opening up, could benefit from
oxytocin. But, before we start talking about medical use of oxytocin,
I believe we need a new system of ethics. Unlike other ‘feel
good’ drugs, oxytocin is very subtle. People might not even
realize that they’ve taken oxytocin. An interesting study
reported in the June 2005 issue of Nature examined the role
of interpersonal trust and oxytocin. Ernst Fehr of the University
of Zurich and his colleagues discovered that men who inhaled a nasal
spray spiked with oxytocin gave more money to partners in a risky investment
game than did the men who sniffed a spray with no active ingredient. The
researchers concluded that “oxytocin specifically affects an individual’s
willingness to accept social risks arising through interpersonal interactions.”

Can you imagine this happening without people knowing
they have been exposed to oxytocin? A good thing could be used
for bad purposes. Obviously, it will be wonderful if we can help
autistic children and others who cannot open to interpersonal relationships,
but we need to think deeply about the ethics involved in any larger use.

8. Do you believe that there is relationship between
intuition and oxytocin?

Dr. Uväs-Moberg: Yes. Oxytocin
fosters openness. I am convinced that intuition is one branch of
that opening. For example, nursing mothers report a profound connection
with their children and often intuitively know what their babies want,
although the babies can’t express themselves verbally. I
believe that this knowing is an intuitive process. There are many
interesting questions about how intuition might work. For example,
what is the difference between memories and images which seem to arise
from the future? How can we keep intuitive images clear and not distorted
by wishful thinking or psychological reactions? These are interesting
questions which should be explored someday.

9. Assuming that you could do any further research
on oxytocin that you wanted, what would interest you?

Dr. Uväs-Moberg: Two of the most
interesting frontiers in oxytocin research are (1) the mental, mind,
or psychological state of a person and (2) the relationship between spirituality
and oxytocin. In the former, I am interested to know if seeing
images or thinking about things that relax you also causes the release
of oxytocin. The neuroscientist and author, Antonio Damasio of Iowa University,
raised this issue in an editorial in the same June 2005 Nature. When
asked if he thought that crowds of shoppers might be persuaded to purchase
more if they were sprayed with oxytocin, Damasio referred to slick marketing
campaigns that people are already exposed to. He said that these
campaigns lure, ‘you in with images of wonderful landscapes or
sex, and [they] probably work in exactly the same way.” I, too,
suspect that this images release oxytocin, but research needs to be done
on how oxytocin works with mind or mental states.

In the case of spirituality, it may be that prayer, contemplation,
and meditation also activate oxytocin, but we have no way of knowing. Energy
medicine professionals are searching for ways to measure the physiology
of body energy. To date, I do not know of any reliable way to do
this, but I believe that oxytocin will play a role and that common principles
may be found in the Body/Mind/Spirit interaction.

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